Warriors: Legends of Troy

Posted 2 years ago By - Marko Djordjevic

Games based on ancient mythology are nothing new and neither is Tecmo-Koei’s rendition of hack-and-slash combat. The two combine to form the Asian publisher’s latest project - which happens to be developed at the Toronto studios, entitled Warriors: Legends of Troy. Rather than focusing on Asia, like so many other games of its ilk, Troy decides to put its attention on ancient Greece, specifically around the events many of us have seen in a lot of Hollywood films like 2004’s Troy. Although the change of scenery is welcomed, this is yet another repetitive clone that will only appeal to a very niche market.

In Legends of Troy, you’ll partake in a series of different missions involving some of the most recognizable names in Greek Mythology. You’ll play as both the Trojans and the Greeks including Achilles, Paris, Ajax and Penthesilea, just to name a few. Each have their own specific missions and fighting styles, but the game plays out in a very linear fashion and there will be a lot of flip-flopping between the two groups.

Combat is fairly straight-forward and just as repetitive as you’d expect. You will have your standard quick attacks as well as focus and stun attacks. While combos are recommended, you can still be successful by spamming the quick attack button and only using focus attacks when the prompt appears, which then triggers a vicious finishing moves. The focus attacks are impressive, but limited to only a few different animations. The only deviation in your attacks occurs when the Fury meter fills up and is activated. Fury attack allows your character a brief moment where they are unstoppable offensively. During these short periods, all attacks are significantly stronger and when attacking lesser units, it can wipe out an entire squad in moments.

Additionally, there’s Kleos, a currency like system which accumulates by completing successful attacks, which can be spent on items to improve your characters. As you progress later in the game, buying and equipping items - such as rings and other trinkets - will help your character against the tougher foes and are absolutely necessary if you plan to finish this thing.

Considering the repetitive action, the missions layouts aren’t as generic as you’d expect. Even with facing the same groups of fighters time and time again, there are with different locations and paths to travel. The missions themselves always have one primary goal, but the inclusion of secondary objectives, which are both optional and hidden in some cases, do mix up the proceedings to some degree. The primary missions have a fairly simple structure with requirements such as reach location A and defeat enemy B. Your secondary tasks will vary though; from saving X amount of farms, locate character Y or keep item Z at above 50% health.

Now, for the issues. For starters, the AI is a joke. Sometimes heroes are paired up with another meaningful or recognizable character. This computer-controlled hero ends up being more of a nuisance than an assistant. Then when fighting, enemy characters will stand around and wait to be attacked and with some, they will stand until a specific number of other characters have fallen, then just run away. In situations where your own forces should be fighting, they do nearly no damage at all and often just act as a distraction so you can sneak up behind to pull off an easy kill.

Another issue is the very blatant collision detection issues and visual slow down that appears far too often. Collision problems are especially evident in boss battles where they will manage to strike your character although the hit is humanly impossible from that angle. As for the slow-down, it is sometimes masked where your parrying will force the game add a slow-motion effect; but when there are a lot of enemies on the screen, the frame rates can drop considerably, making the game unplayable for a brief second or two.

The graphical issues don’t end there as the game has a very poor draw distance with enemies often only appearing at close range. Yes, there is a nice effort into varying the level environments, but these are often overshadowed by the pop-ins. Hero designs are the game’s strong point, but the animations during the cut-scenes are in desperate need of an additional run-through as character’s mouths often don’t move or are not synced properly to the dialogue.

Speaking of the dialogue, this isn’t an Oscar-worthy effort, but at least the delivery is fair. A few characters actually sound good, but the secondary players - specifically the female ones - can be unintentionally comical. There are also some questionable pronunciation issues and often it seems like the linguistic coach - if there was one - wasn’t directing the voice actors properly as to how to pronounce certain names and locations. One character will say a place one way, with another one saying it completely differently. One of the saving graces for the audio is the game’s score, which not only is fitting, but is quite varied and rarely repeats itself. The music kicks in at the right moments in key situations and is one of the few highlights of the game overall.

Although the missions are quite linear, the story portion is pretty lengthy and the inclusion of secondary objectives and hidden items to discover does encourage a second play-through. As you progress, a few bonus items are unlocked. These include character art, music and content for the Challenge Mode. This mode allows you to take part in different events such as arena combat, with all the various characters made available. Unfortunately, it’s strictly a single player affair. Considering these are unlocked as you progress, you will need to play through the entire game in order to unlock and experience every aspect. But alas, it would have been nice had the arena combat allowed you to play against a friend rather than computer controlled characters.

Conclusion

Warriors: Legends of Troy is a nice change of pace from other Warrior-type games published by Tecmo-Koei. Unfortunately, it still is hampered by a lot of problems. Those with an interest in Greek Mythology will find some enjoyment and even die-hard fans of the Dynasty Warriors franchise will appreciate what is offered here. But for the rest of you, this is nothing more than a generic action game and one that really doesn’t offer anything unique that you won’t find with other, better titles.